Cecelia Aragon is a daughter of immigrants that grew up in Indiana. She was smart, enjoyed math, and was often bullied and felt out of place. Fast forward to her early adulthood, a fellow co-worker offered to take her up for a ride in his plane. It terrified her but then it changed her life. She oscillated back and forth between confidence and insecurity as she learned to fly and then mastered aerobatics of flight. A well told story that often uses math references to relate to life and flying. After reading this book you’ll feel that anything is possible.
#netgalley #flyingfree

The subtitle of this book says it all - My Victory over Fear to Become the First Latina Pilot on the US Aerobatic Team. This empowering memoir shines a light on numerous obstacles that Cecelia Aragon faced throughout her life, and how she overcame them, and is still doing so today.

I really loved this book. It was such a fascinating tale of an extraordinary person. I did like how it focused on her specific journey in time. But the intro introduced so many other facets that I would love to read more from this author. I really related to her background and growing up shy and scared. Reading about someone who overcomes such obstacles and writes about them with such honesty and how they still affect her was so refreshing. This book definitely left me feeling inspired

"Air was the element I was born to live in.
My wings trembled in the air currents like they'd grown out of the muscles in my back. This plane was my body. My body gleamed in the sun, a tiny bright being free of the confines of the world."

This is the kind of stuff I crave for. An amazing female role model (A programmer, a nerdy computer scientist, an aerobatic pilot that won championships and university professor!) that I can look up to, the life of a successful aviatrix tingling my flying bones and helping me achieve my best, defying all odds in a man-oriented sector.
"Don't ever get too good at a traditionally female task or they'll make you do it for the rest of your life," is one of the most relatable sentences of this amazing memoir.
Flying is the passion that set free Cecilia Aragon and my heart filled with joy and excitement all through this book. I loved every single page, the rites of passages she accounted were excruciatingly hard and painful that lead to a life of fulfillment.
Flying is cheating death every day and for women to go down that road, especially if they are grown in a traditional atmosphere is especially difficult. The environment and society prepare you for the roles you will lead and deviating from this road requires courage and determination to eliminate obstacles along the way.
The price you pay is worth it, though and I agree with every word of her description of flying: "It was a three-dimensional dance in the sky, art plus mathematics, science plus sport, requiring all reflexes, rhythm, and timing."
A must-read for aviation enthusiasts, female aviators and all women struggling to achieve the best of themselves. This book will definitely boost your spirits and as Aragon says: "Life is relentless, and if you allow yourself to be fully alive, you too will become a force of nature."

"I've heard people describe how alcohol or heroin seems to fill the hole in their heart, how it wipes all the pain away. That's the effect flying had on me.
For so long, I've been aching, lonely, missing something essential. Flitting from one failure to another. But that day, the hole in my heart was filled."